


Sunset/Midnight/Dawn

by MinervaFan



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, Colleagues with Benefits, F/M, Healing Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-09-02 00:22:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20266963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MinervaFan/pseuds/MinervaFan
Summary: The Nick Scratch that descended into Hell is not the Nick Scratch who returned. The Zelda who left for Rome is not the Zelda who returned. Two lost souls, struggling to find their way out of the darkness.





	Sunset/Midnight/Dawn

**Author's Note:**

  * For [katmigordon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/katmigordon/gifts).

## I. Nicholas

The Nicholas Scratch who descended into Hell is not the same who emerged. The demon has been expunged, the organic prison purged of its sole inmate.

There is no trace of The Dark Lord left in him, yet Nick is hardly unscathed. Within him, hidden in the deepest nooks and crannies, remains a residue, some dark remnant he can neither shake nor explain. 

There is no denying it.

He walks cautiously now. Touch is not his friend, nor is the darkness empty. Sound has become hollow, as Nick himself has become a shell, abandoned and forgotten. 

His voice rings false in his own ears, and those who risked all to save him? 

Two weeks after he is freed from Hell, it is over with Sabrina. It's never said aloud, but they both know the Nick she loved is dead.

## II. Zelda

She has perfected the art of controlled non-expression. Like the Damask figurines of her childhood, Zelda weathers the dramas of the day nonplussed, her features fixed in a benign half-smile more porcelain than flesh. And like those fragile dolls, perched amidst the chaos of Mother and Father's tumultuous marriage, Zelda keeps herself as distant and protected as she can, lest in some careless moment a traumatized child send her tumbling to her doom.

Even with Hilda, who has seen almost as much as she by now, it is necessary to maintain the facade. 

She is the strong one, the de facto leader of this ragged coven of survivors. Let Hilda nurse their tortured hearts. She is in the business of souls, now, and frankly, there is no room for sentimentality. 

No room for weakness as their new Goddess fights for control of Hell. 

No revolution is won in a single battle, and this High Priestess is also a general.

The forces of patriarchy have no interest in allowing this insurrection to stand.

She has work to do.

She stares at her face in the mirror for just a moment before returning to the papers before her. "In Lilith's name, Zelda," she scolds her reflection. "Keep it together."

This religion isn't going to form itself. She can mourn the cracks in the Damask later.

## III. Cigarette

The second-hand smoke from the cigarettes she's chain-smoking triggers something both familiar and disturbing in him. His lungs remember what his mind has blissfully abandoned, memories of sulfur and heat and rage from before the rise of the most ancient civilizations. 

They are memories no transient being should have, pain better suited to immortal souls. He asks her for a cigarette, even though he doesn't smoke.

She looks up from the syllabus he's hastily constructed for her review, a flicker of surprise appearing and disappearing from her features almost before it can register in his mind.

Mother Spellman says nothing but produces a thin silver case she flicks open to reveal a row of short, unfiltered cigarettes. He selects one and puts it to his lips, leaning forward to light with the tip of hers.

She eyes him curiously as he holds the tiny cigarette precariously between his thumb and forefinger and takes a drag.

"I'm sorry," she says. "I don't have another holder."

He grins as he pulls another long, burning drag of smoke into his lungs. "That's okay. That look only works for femme fatales, anyway."

Zelda ' s expression is unreadable. She hesitates a moment longer than is comfortable before turning her attention back to the syllabus. As she scratches firm strokes through several lines, she says, "These items are far too advanced for first-year students."

## IV. The Adjunct

In her quieter moments, she might mourn the loss of the boy Sabrina once cared for. His work is adequate, for a student drafted into teaching well before his own education is completed. But Nicholas Scratch is no longer a child. None of them have the luxury of innocence anymore, but there is something ancient and haunted in those eyes now.

He’s gone now, off to help with the younger survivors. 

When will she stop thinking of them as survivors? For better or worse, they are her coven now and she, their high priestess.

A fortnight after Sabrina’s foolish, reckless and, praise Lilith, ultimately successful rescue attempt, she’d returned home to find Hilda cooing over the sobbing child. She lingered outside Sabrina’s door long enough to hear the tearful story, well, what was left of it. How Nick had changed. At one point in her long life, the confused, agonized tone in her niece’s voice would have broken her heart.

But Zelda had locked her heart in a box, long before the averted apocalypse, a box which played no music and hid no photos.

Hilda had been furious when she’d tapped Mr. Scratch to teach at the ad-hoc Academy. “He’s just a boy,” she’d argued. “How is he going to teach his peers? You can’t put that on him”

“I can and I will.” The argument was pointless. There was a need to be filled, and Zelda would fill it any way she could. 

And a mage who had swallowed the essence of the Dark Lord whole, even for a moment, no longer had any peers to worry about.

## V. Mortuary

He’s taken to sleeping on the embalming slab. Spellman’s Mortuary has, for all intents and purposes, ceased to be. Whenever a grieving mortal does find their way up the isolated path, Sister Hilda simply refers them to the sisters’ former competition with a sympathetic look and comforting nod.

The sprawling old manor has been transformed, part school, part headquarters, part flophouse for the dregs of the former Church of Night. Rooms long abandoned are repurposed, beds conjured, crannies widened to store the meager possessions of those displaced by Faustus Blackwood’s act of brutality.

For the first few weeks, he tried sharing a room, but it soon became apparent that no one could be in his presence for long comfortably. After the third attempt at a roommate, he simply grabbed his belongings and headed to the morgue.

He lies on his back where so many before him slept their final slumber, and he knows he shares more kinship with the parade of corpses processed by Ambrose’s artistry than any of the living witches sleeping upstairs.

Besides, the metal is cool against the fires that rage in his sleep.

## VI. The Witching Hour

The sound of sleep torments her on nights like this. Hilda is back in their room, snoring gently as she props up against a pillow, with a child sleeping, flailed and drooling, across her bosom. Her sister has become mother to all, wrapping every scraped knee and wounded psyche in a soft, comforting embrace, all sweetness and spices and earth and hearth. 

Zelda watches as the pair sleeps fitfully together in their wholesome embrace, wondering when last she felt so safe in another pair of arms. She realizes she’s never felt that safe with anyone.

In another lifetime, the thought would have sent her running for a cigarette and a whiskey, but tonight it is just another fact to tuck behind her ears like a stray lock of hair. 

Stepping quietly into the hallway, she takes a moment to check each of the rooms as she moves towards the stairwell. Each door opening silently, beds filled with sleeping children--they are all children in her tired eyes now. Down the stairs and into the kitchen, put on the kettle, light a cigarette. Wipe the sleep from her eyes. Close them longer than needed.

Lean back in the chair and breathe.

Listen to the sound of the kettle brewing.

Listen to the sound of her own heart beating.

The blood in her veins.

Her pulse is like thunder in the silence.

The cigarette breathes fire into her lungs, and her heartbeat screams in her chest.

The kettle is whistling by the time she realizes her cheeks are wet.

## VII. The Turn of the Clock

He finds her in the kitchen, smoking. Perhaps he followed the smoke in an unconscious desire to return below. Perhaps he is just bored trying to sleep.

She says nothing as he pulls the kettle she’s left whistling off the stove. She does not acknowledge him as he pours two cups of tea and sets one on the table before her before looking around for the bottle. It’s only a moment before he sees the whiskey, and opens it to pour a shot into both cups. 

“You’ve been crying.”

She rolls her eyes at the obvious.

“Yeah,” he answers her silence. “I can’t sleep either.” He downs the spiked tea easily. The next serving, he doesn’t bother with the tea, just the shot. 

Zelda takes the bottle, adding more to her cup "to cool the tea."

They drink in companionable silence until Nick says, "You wanna get out of here."

She had no idea how desperately she had until he asked. 

They did not clean up after themselves as they headed out the door.

  


## VIII. Jezebel

The car is a 1960 Mercedes-Benz 190SL convertible, mint condition, cherry red with white leather interiors. Zelda has kept it behind an obscuring spell for years, only taking it out when she’s sure Hilda and (perhaps more importantly) Sabrina will not see it. Not that either could drive it. Despite driving an ambulance in The Great War, Hilda had never really mastered the nuances of manual transmission. Sabrina, she had purposely never taught to drive a stick.

Perhaps it is selfish, but this car is her one reminder of the freedom she once took for granted, a flamboyant reminder of her flapper years, her Mod years, those wild parties in the Victorian underground. Even before the fall of Lucifer, there were times when Zelda just liked to get out and drive.

Tonight, though, it was Nick behind the wheel, expertly handling Jezebel as they made their way through the night. His look of unmitigated lust as she showed him the car had humored her in a way few this did these days, and the amount of whiskey flowing through her veins only reinforced the decision to toss him the keys. 

Zelda leans back in the passenger seat, setting her gaze on the nascent moon as it begins its descent back to the horizon in preparation for the rise of the sun in a few hours. The wind is warm against her skin, her auburn hair flying behind her recklessly. There is a scarf in the glove box, but she passes. Let it tangle, she thinks. Witches in the old days found power in the chaos, mysteries revealed in the knots to unravel.

Nick takes them down a long, empty road towards Miller’s Lake. Zelda remembers when this spot was _ the _ place for young lovers, happy families, anyone desiring a respite from the growing towns and cities.

Now the lake, like so many other natural places, has been forgotten in favor of more modern pleasures. There are newer spots, cooler spots with wifi and snack stands and other conveniences. But this place?

She remembers picnics and skinny-dipping and lovemaking under the full moon with boys and girls whose names she’s forgotten but whose scents would stir her passions in a heartbeat. She remembers long conversations over wine as a symphony of frogs and crickets and owls provided a soundtrack to intellectual and philosophical journeys.

Nick parks the car a few yards away from the lake. The lot is showing signs of wear, with weeds sleeping between the cracks in the pavement. As the engine purrs to a stop, they are engulfed by a sudden vacuum of sound, a pregnant silence between moments. 

“The radio works,” she says. “If you want it.”

“I don’t think we’d get a signal out here.”

“We’re witches,” Zelda grins. Even with the weight of eternal darkness in his eyes, this is still a young man. “We can have anything we want, from Bach to Benny Goodman to the…”

“B-52s?”

“I was going to say The Beatles, but yes, even the B-52s if you want it.” She is smiling at the absurdity of the conversation. They both know there will be no classical or Big Band or Rock Lobster tonight.

Tonight is for peace and moonlight and sweet escape.

When he leans over to kiss her, she does not push him away. When he begins to unbutton her blouse, she smiles and does it for him. The radio is forgotten completely as their clothes scatter.

## IX. Dawn

The sun is pushing toward the horizon as they head back to the Mortuary. Hilda will be rising soon, and she’d rather be home _ before _ that happens. 

“You okay?” Nick asks, his eyes darting to the rear-view mirror to look at her.

“Wonderful,” she purrs. “Tonight was marvelous, Nicholas.” Zelda does feel good, better than she has in a while. And not just for the sex, although it was fantastic. 

She feels relieved. She feels seen, by someone equally broken yet just as determined to move forward. She feels…

Hopeful.

“You know this is not a relationship,” she says as he shifts into second gear.

“Of course not,” he answers with a grin. “We’re colleagues, Mother Spellman.”

“We shouldn’t...mention this to Sabrina.” There is a hesitation. “I don’t think she would understand.”

Nick nods. They are only a mile from the Spellman place, and the understanding between them couldn’t be clearer. This is a one-time thing. Of course, if their paths should cross as a Coven-related orgy…

She smiles again. There is a lot to do today, but that doesn’t bother her one bit.

The End

  
  
  



End file.
